Digital rights management (“DRM”) schemes have been devised to protect against unapproved distribution of digital content. Under a typical DRM scheme, a user obtains digital content—an audio file, for example—from a content provider and is allowed to make only a certain number of copies, and/or to play the audio file on a limited number of playback devices. Where the content has been obtained under a subscription arrangement, as another example, the content may become unplayable once the subscription ends.
A growing problem is that while DRM schemes are proliferating, they are typically also incompatible with each other. That is, digital audio file purchased under one DRM scheme, for example, is unusable on a playback system operating under a different DRM scheme. A consumer must then either maintain a separate system for each DRM scheme associated with a content provider he or she wishes to obtain content from, or simply choose one content provider and deal strictly with one DRM scheme, but possibly suffer a loss of variety in accessible content.
Another problem arises where a user owns more that one playback device, a cell phone and an MP3 player, for example. The user may be required to obtain music files strictly from one vendor under a first DRM using the cell phone, and strictly from another vendor under a second DRM scheme using the MP3 player. But when a favorite music file is only available from the vendor supporting the MP3 player, the user will thus be prevented from transferring the file to the cell phone because of a DRM conflict.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method for addressing these and other problems found in the conventional systems as described above.